‘The internet is not evil and we are not innocent children.’
Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Washington gunman motivated by fake news 'Pizzagate' conspiracy

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In any other year, a story like “Pizzagate” would get you laughed out of the room. The conspiracy theory claiming that Hillary Clinton was part of an underground child-sex trafficking ring run out of a pizza shop, is bizarre and disturbing from start to finish. But in 2016 – a year where nothing seems to make sense anymore – a story like that can be cited as a motive for a crime.

On Sunday, a gunman carrying an assault rifle entered a pizza shop in Washington DC, Comet Ping Pong. He reportedly wanted to “self-investigate” the spurious Clinton report. Thankfully no-one was injured or killed. Make no mistake: this grim story is a prime example of the free rein we’ve given to the worst of ourselves this year. It also shows how eager political operatives are to feed our basest instincts.

The people spreading this fake story – and countless other ones which circulated this year, out-performing real articles on Facebook – don’t actually believe in Pizzagate. They do not really believe that there is a child trafficking ring being run underneath a pizza shop in Washington DC in which Hillary Clinton takes part.

They don’t really believe in Pizzagate just like they do not believe that Hillary Clinton had an FBI agent killed for supposedly leaking her emails, or that three million people “illegally voted” for Clinton in this election.

You know what they do believe? That Hillary Clinton – and liberals more generally –are their enemy. And because they have labeled them their enemy, they believe they are at war with them. And in this war they are looking for weapons. The internet, which has found a way to monetize their hate, has been happy to provide them with these weapons.

This is an agreement they have willingly entered into with the internet: it provides them with the content that justifies their hate, they provide the clicks and shares that pay the bills of fake-news factories.

They were not duped, they are not taken advantage of. They willingly take whatever outrageous story fits their unjustified hatred at face-value without asking any questions. And they are deciding to spread those lies to others looking for a funnel that they can pour their vitriol down.

There will likely be a few people who will believe the lie, a few angry, violent and deluded people in crisis who are desperate to belong to something who will honestly believe these horrific lies. They will show up at a pizza shop with a gun, endangering the lives of many people. Just as a man showed up at a Planned Parenthood clinic last year, killing three people, believing the lie that almost nobody else honestly did, that Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts. People can and will die because of these lies, but people will continue to spread them, because people die in war.

The internet is not evil and we are not innocent children. The internet gives us what we want and makes money off of that. Whether you want truth or lies, the internet can give you either – and people will be able to make a living off of that. But when you hate someone, truth is not what you’re in the market for.

When you look at scandals like Pizzagate, you should be sad and afraid, but not about how “gullible” the American public is. You should be terrified of how low some of us are willing to stoop – the lies some of us are willing to spread and the lives some of us are willing to risk and ruin – in order to destroy our political foes.

Moderators of pro-Trump Reddit group linked to fake news crackdown on posts

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When we are right, all we need is the truth to justify our actions. If the truth doesn’t suffice, that’s a good indicator that we are wrong. We should all be investigating that second of satisfaction and justification we feel when we see a headline claiming horrific wrongdoing by those we oppose, because therein lies our undoing. Pizzagate is a lie, but what it says about our society is real.